This invention relates to a display for producing a picture or design and, more particularly, to a display having picture elements which blend together to produce a photographic effect.
In the past, picture elements have been used for constructing pictures and designs on displays. Such displays have served as toys and games, and the formation of interesting designs has provided both a hobby and an educational experience. The form, layout, and coloration of the picture elements have been used to produce specific qualities to the resulting picture based on the characteristics of the individual picture elements.
A problem arises in that none of these displays have been able to provide the impact and the quality of a photograph or photo-design as may be seen by considering the following display technology.
First, it is noted that photographic techniques provide a variety of dramatic effects as may be seen in the book, "Darkroom Magic" by Otto Litzel which was published by the American Photographic Book Publishing Company in 1975, and in "Design by Photography" by O. R. Croy, which was published by Hastings House Publishers in 1972. The graphic picture effects are obtained by a variety of techniques such as tone-separation, posterization, half-tone and texture screening, and solarization. In addition, with the help of computer processing, the fragmentation of pictures according to preselected density values enables the production of computer generated pictures. Such computer generated pictures may be seen in "The Computer in Art" in page 20, by Jassia Reinchardt, which was published by van Nostrand Reinhold Company in 1971. However, there is no teaching as to how such effects can be produced by the manual or stepwise placement of picture elements on a display as would be performed by persons as a hobby and as an educational experience in understanding the perception of images.
With respect to a display formed of picture elements, the U.S. Pat. No. 3,987,558 which issued in the name of Tsukamoto on Oct. 26, 1976 shows a picture in FIG. 1 wherein the dark areas are laced with regions giving the appearance of lines which detract from the outlines of the dark areas. Similarly, the edges of the blocks shown in FIG. 17 are seen to detract from the picture quality, apparently from the arrangement of the blocks wherein all the edges of a group of blocks fall on a single line which catches the eye of an observer. Also, there is no teaching of the selection of a scale of tones, or color and graphic densities to produce designs of photographic qualities.
A similar problem in the alignment of the edges appears in the checkerboard arrangement disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 3,002,309 which issued in the name of Snyder on Oct. 3, 1961, and in U.S. Pat. No. 2,534,550 which issued in the name of Frechtmann on Dec. 19, 1950, neither of these patents disclosing the selection and production of a tone and/or chromatic scale. In the U.S. Pat. No. 3,384,982 which issued in the name of Herbert on May 28, 1968, it is disclosed that portions of the mounting panel are visible between the colored paper units to border the units and thereby enhance the visual effect of the units. Such enhancement of the separation of the colored paper units is counterproductive to the production of a photographic effect wherein there is to be no perception of the individual picture elements.